


Special Things I Compile

by Waistcoat35



Category: The Greatest Showman (Movies), The Greatest Showman - Fandom
Genre: Apologies, During Canon, F/M, Fluff, I love this film can you tell yet, Inspired by A Million Dreams, Phineas is actually shy around Charity, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, She thinks it's sweet, So do I, these two i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: Years afterwards, she would look at all of his little gifts gathered in a box - and even when she felt like screaming or crying or just giving up, it would make her stop, and think, and slowly, heal.(Or, Barnum used to send Charity tiny gifts in his letters to make her smile.)





	Special Things I Compile

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for all of the wonderful comments on my Greatest Showman fics so far! I hope you enjoy this one. I promised I'd include Charity more this time, didn't I?  
> (P.S. These are still about the movie characters, not the real life people - I'm fully aware that the real P.T Barnum was far from a person deserving of a fluff fic about him.)

Even as the sky bled pink and blue and grey and black in a cycle that spanned years on end, neither of them forgot the person waiting on the other end of that sky. Through storms and deaths and dirt and poverty, Phineas focused on the climb. His climb was one you couldn’t do with a rope or a pickaxe – wealth was his rope, status his pickaxe. One would sustain him from falling, the other would help him to pull himself up.

(And wasn’t it both sweet and terribly sad that he really was on the ground while she stayed at the top of her tower; every night, he gazed up at the night sky from his pile of rags while she looked wistfully down at the city lights from her balcony, each seeing the lights as a path to the other. And so, he reached for the stars while she basked in the glow of the lamps.)

He dreamed of someday building her a treasure house – a place of dreams, so like the old mansion she had loved. But surely a treasure house needed things to put in it, things to make it special.

That was how the collection started, really.

* * *

 

It had started out terribly small. He was walking down the street, head bowed against the spatters of icy rain that managed to filter through the city smog. When the drops splashed to the pavement, they made mud cling to the hems of his trousers – it was in the mud that he saw a slight glint in the light of one of the streetlamps, turned on early due to the poor light in the rain.

Pushing down his instinct to ignore it and keep walking, Phineas had bent down and reached out, swiping away stray bits of street litter to uncover the treasure. (It would appear that even years after that, he could never help but pick out gems from the everyday filth of the city – some of them human, even.)

It was a brooch, tiny and perfectly formed into the shape of a gleaming green hummingbird. The intricately worked shape seemed to buzz with energy as though in life – and that energy reminded him of her so very painfully. For certain, judging from the tiny stones embedded in the metal, if he pawned it or even sold it on a street corner he could get a pretty sum for it – enough to feed himself for some time, at least. But that twinkling reminder, however small, set a different plan into motion in his mind.

A few days later brought about a slightly crumpled letter in an envelope, ready to be posted. When he reached the postbox, before he could change his mind, Phineas took the brooch out of his pocket and placed it in the envelope, sealing it up firmly. A small part of him protested that it would mean going hungry for several days, if he couldn’t find work. But that part of him was quelled when he pictured a beaming smile framed by hazel eyes, reflecting the shine of the gift.

It didn’t end there, either. Soon, Charity’s room at the school must have resembled the treasure house he wished her to have. Every week, something new went into an envelope – pressed petals plucked from a peach rose as he passed the florists’ stand, an iridescent blue feather from the brim of a hat, a foreign coin sunken at the bottom of a puddle. Scattered beads from a broken necklace, a length of bright thread when he could scrounge up the spare money, (he couldn’t afford to call it spare, not really, but he saw Charity’s gifts as all part and parcel of his weekly expenses.) pictures of wondrous things and places and people torn from his newspapers. Things that most people would dismiss as garbage, really – but every one cost him just slightly, the debt repaid with an imagining of Charity’s smile as she opened each new letter.

* * *

Years later, right after the flames and the flood and the circus, they are getting off the train and going back home. To their _new_ home, rather. It’s only a small place, a house on a corner that is shared with the elderly woman upstairs who they split the rent with. Somehow, though, it feels more right than the mansion they’ve left behind. Charity is the first to say so - and really, he agrees. Their two daughters apparently share the sentiment - they run around and play and squeal just as they did in the apartment, in the mansion.

They unpack their things into the small, unworldly space. It manages to feel cosy and safe the way a big old house never would have, with just enough rooms and a warmth that can't leak out through the cracks around the windowsill. It comes with another warmth, too - the warmth of a chaste kiss after a long day of work, the warmth of gentle hands rubbing his arms and a smile like sunbeams. First he'd once pictured that smile and longed for it, then he'd had it, then he'd lost it, and now he's won it back again.

The last box they come across is one that he doesn't recognise - it's an old wooden box, sides almost falling in with age, and when Charity places it on the bed she does so with a tenderness surely unnecessary even for such a fragile item. Phineas, however, can't quite find it in him to protest when she smiles at him with that same tenderness.

"What's that, dear?"

"Phineas, you of all people should  _know_ what this is!"

"But what does that even- _oof_!" He grunts as she passes it to him suddenly, sliding the lid open so he can look inside. He peers down into the depths of the box, and what he finds has him grinning like Prince Humbug in one of his shows. Like a love-sick fool. (Appropriate given that that's what he is, if he is being completely honest with himself.) There is a whole huge collection of things - things he recognises, however vaguely, from a childhood long past. On the top of the pile, however, is one that tweaks at his heartstrings and makes another, softer expression appear on his face in place of his usual grin. It it a brooch, perfectly formed to be a hummingbird in flight.

He considers pretending not to remember - after all, they're a handful of trinkets that he pitifully scrounged together the savings for. Nothing much - the courting tools of a foolish young boy trying to make his friend smile. But from the joyful, nostalgic look on Charity's face, clearly it worked. And that's what makes him nod, smile, recount stories of where he found each one. Sometimes the truth is  _slightly_ twisted- he used to make up wild tales about each item in his letters, hoping that it would amuse her - but Charity laughs and laughs, so it's worth a little fib or two.

She says that she always loved the letters, the little things that showed he'd thought of her. 

"I always thought about you." There - it's out before he can quite stop himself. Immediately he flushes slightly, and for a moment he becomes the stammering young boy he'd been back then. Charity gives him that fond look that she gets when she thinks he's being particularly silly (he can't pretend that he doesn't  _love_ that look.) and kisses him, less chaste than the one that came before. He flushes more, and gains that shy, pleased look that is somehow all his own and more real than any circus act.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking about adding a second chapter from Charity's perspective soon. Thanks for reading and for your continued support!  
> (Oh, and if you want to ask/talk about my work on tumblr, my URL is magicalpiratedragon :)


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